This pattern is what we call the progress
principle: of all the positive events that influence
inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in
meaningful work; of all the negative events, the single most
powerful is the opposite of progress—setbacks in the work. We
consider this to be a fundamental management principle:
facilitating progress is the most effective way for managers to
influence inner work life. Even when progress
happens in small steps, a person’s sense of steady forward
movement toward an important goal can make all the difference
between a great day and a terrible one. This pattern became
increasingly obvious as the diaries came in from all the teams in
our study. People’s inner work lives seemed to lift
or drag depending on whether or not their projects moved forward,
even by small increments. Small wins often had a surprisingly
strong positive effect, and small losses a surprisingly strong
negative one. We tested our impressions more
rigorously in two ways. Each confirmed the power of progress to
dominate inner work life.

In an analysis of knowledge workers’ diaries, the authors found
that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work
life (the mix of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that is
critical to performance) than making progress in meaningful work.
If a person is motivated and happy at the end of the workday,
it’s a good bet that he or she achieved something,
however small. If the person drags out of the office disengaged
and joyless, a setback is likely to blame.

Time pressure is one of the most interesting forces we studied.
Although occasional time pressure for short periods can be
exhilarating, using extreme time-pressure to stimulate positive
inner work life, for weeks on end or even in the short run, is
playing with fire (see “Time Pressure and
Creativity”). If managers regularly set impossibly
short time-frames or impossibly high workloads, employees become
stressed, unhappy, and unmotivated—burned out. Yet, people hate
being bored. it was rare for any participant in our study to
report a day with very low time pressure, such days—when they did
occur—were also not conducive to positive inner work life. In
general, then, low-to-moderate time pressure seems optimal for
sustaining positive thoughts, feelings, and drives.

We found that on days of the most extreme time
pressure, the professionals in our study were 45 percent less
likely to come up with a new idea or solve a complex problem.
Even worse, there’s a kind of “pressure hangover,” with lower
creativity persisting for two days or
more.

3) You’re More Creative When It’s Not About The
Money

Amabile found artwork done for love was judged to be of higher
quality than pieces done for money.

Teresa Amabile, the Harvard Business School professor and one of
the world’s leading researchers on creativity, has frequently
tested the effects of contingent rewards on the creative
process…“Our results were quite startling,” the researchers
wrote. “The commissioned works were rated as
significantly less creative than the non-commissioned
works, yet they were not rated as different in technical
quality. Moreover, the artists reported feeling significantly
more constrained when doing commissioned works than when doing
non-commissioned works.”

So how can you reward good creative work when money hurts
performance? Use bonuses.

…Amabile has found in some studies “that the highest
levels of creativity were produced by subjects who received a
reward as a kind of a bonus.” So when the poster turns
out great, you could buy the design team a case of beer or even
hand them a cash bonus without snuffing their creativity. The
team didn’t expect any extras and getting them didn’t hinge on a
particular outcome. You’re simply offering your appreciation for
their stellar work. But keep in mind one ginormous caveat:
Repeated “now that” bonuses can quickly become expected “if-then”
entitlements—which can ultimately crater effective performance.

Or give rewards that support personal motivation. Good examples
are recognition, helpful feedback, and time, freedom or resources
to pursue exciting ideas.

Even the prospect of direct rewards, normally suffocating
to creativity, could be helpful if they were the right kinds of
rewards—those “that more time, freedom, or resources to pursue
exciting ideas.” These findings prompted Amabile to revise her
hypothesis: Intrinsic motivation is still best, and extrinsic
motivation that’s controlling is still detrimental to creativity,
but extrinsic motivators that reinforce intrinsic drives can be
highly effective.

4) Want To Be More Creative? First, Get
Happy

“Overall, the more positive a person’s mood on a given day, the
more creative thinking he did that day.” There was even a
carryover effect for the next two days after.

Our diary study revealed a definitive connection between
positive emotion and creativity. We looked at specific emotions
as well as overall mood (the aggregate of a person’s positive and
negative emotions during the day). Overall, the more positive a
person’s mood on a given day, the more creative thinking he did
that day. Across all study participants, there was a 50 percent
increase in the odds of having a creative idea on days when
people reported positive moods, compared with days when they
reported negative moods.

And:

We even found a surprising carryover effect showing that
creativity follows from positive emotion. The more
positive a person’s mood on a given day, the more creative
thinking he did the next day—and, to some extent, the day after
that—even taking into account his moods on those later
days. This may be due to what psychologists call an
incubation effect. Pleasant moods stimulate greater breadth in
thinking—greater cognitive variation—which can linger and even
build over a day or more. Such cognitive variation can lead to
new insights at work.

Try It Yourself

Keep a work diary and see what connections you can make between
what happens at the office and how you feel. Amabile discusses
the best way to do it in her 99u talk: